Part 48

The final culmination of this vast and varied Republic will be the production and perennial establishment of millions of comfortable city homesteads and moderate-sized farms, healthy and independent, single separate ownership, fee simple, life in them complete but cheap, within reach of all. Exceptional wealth, splendor, countless manufactures, excess of exports, immense capital and capitalists, the five-dollar-a-day hotels well fill'd, artificial improvements, even books, colleges, and the suffrage--all, in many respects, in themselves, (hard as it is to say so, and sharp as a surgeon's lance,) form, more or less, a sort of anti-democratic disease and monstrosity, except as they contribute by curious indirections to that culmination--seem to me mainly of value, or worth consideration, only with reference to it.

There is a subtle something in the common earth, crops, cattle, air, trees, &c., and in having to do at first hand with them, that forms the only purifying and perennial element for individuals and for society. I must confess I want to see the agricultural occupation of America at first hand permanently broaden'd. Its gains are the only ones on which God seems to smile. What others--what business, profit, wealth, without a taint? What fortune else--what dollar--does not stand for, and come from, more or less imposition, lying, unnaturalness?

AN AMERICAN PROBLEM

One of the problems presented in America these times is, how to combine one's duty and policy as a member of associations, societies, brotherhoods or what not, and one's obligations to the State and Nation, with essential freedom as an individual personality, without which freedom a man cannot grow or expand, or be full, modern, heroic, democratic, American. With all the necessities and benefits of association, (and the world cannot get along without it,) the true nobility and satisfaction of a man consist in his thinking and acting for himself. The problem, I say, is to combine the two, so as not to ignore either.

THE LAST COLLECTIVE COMPACTION

I like well our polyglot construction-stamp, and the retention thereof, in the broad, the tolerating, the many-sided, the collective. All nations here--a home for every race on earth. British, German, Scandinavian, Spanish, French, Italian--papers published, plays acted, speeches made, in all languages--on our shores the crowning resultant of those distillations, decantations, compactions of humanity, that have been going on, on trial, over the earth so long.

APPENDIX

PIECES IN EARLY YOUTH

1834-'42

DOUGH-FACE SONG --Like dough; soft; yielding to pressure; pale----Webster's Dictionary.

We are all docile dough-faces, They knead us with the fist, They, the dashing southern lords, We labor as they list; For them we speak--or hold our tongues, For them we turn and twist.

We join them in their howl against Free soil and "abolition," That firebrand--that assassin knife-- Which risk our land's condition, And leave no peace of life to any Dough-faced politician.

To put down "agitation," now, We think the most judicious; To damn all "northern fanatics," Those "traitors" black and vicious; The "reg'lar party usages" For us, and no "new issues."

Things have come to a pretty pass, When a trifle small as this, Moving and bartering nigger slaves, Can open an abyss, With jaws a-gape for "the two great parties;" A pretty thought, I wis!

Principle--freedom!--fiddlesticks! We know not where they're found. Rights of the masses--progress!--bah! Words that tickle and sound; But claiming to rule o'er "practical men" Is very different ground.

Beyond all such we know a term Charming to ears and eyes, With it we'll stab young Freedom, And do it in disguise;

Speak soft, ye wily dough-faces-- That term is "compromise."

And what if children, growing up, In future seasons read The thing we do? and heart and tongue Accurse us for the deed? The future cannot touch us; The present gain we heed.

Then, all together, dough-faces! Let's stop the exciting clatter, And pacify slave-breeding wrath By yielding all the matter; For otherwise, as sure as guns, The Union it will shatter.

Besides, to tell the honest truth (For us an innovation,) Keeping in with the slave power Is our personal salvation; We've very little to expect From t' other part of the nation.

Besides it's plain at Washington Who likeliest wins the race, What earthly chance has "free soil" For any good fat place? While many a daw has feather'd his nest, By his creamy and meek dough-face.

Take heart, then, sweet companions, Be steady, Scripture Dick! Webster, Cooper, Walker, To your allegiance stick! With Brooks, and Briggs and Phoenix, Stand up through thin and thick!

We do not ask a bold brave front; We never try that game; 'Twould bring the storm upon our heads, A huge mad storm of shame; Evade it, brothers--"compromise" Will answer just the same.

PAUMANOK.

DEATH IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM (A Fact)

Ting-a-ling-ling-ling! went the little bell on the teacher's desk of a village-school one morning, when the studies of the earlier part of the day were about half completed. It was well understood that this was a command for silence and attention; and when these had been obtained, the master spoke. He was a low thick-set man, and his name was Lugare.

"Boys," said he, "I have had a complaint enter'd, that last night some of you were stealing fruit from Mr. Nichols's garden. I rather think I know the thief. Tim Barker, step up here, sir."

The one to whom he spoke came forward. He was a slight, fair-looking boy of about thirteen; and his face had a laughing, good-humor'd expression, which even the charge now preferr'd against him, and the stern tone and threatening look of the teacher, had not entirely dissipated. The countenance of the boy, however, was too unearthly fair for health; it had, notwithstanding its fleshy, cheerful look, a singular cast as if some inward disease, and that a fearful one, were seated within. As the stripling stood before that place of judgment--that place so often made the scene of heartless and coarse brutality, of timid innocence confused, helpless child-hood outraged, and gentle feelings crush' d--Lugare looked on him with a frown which plainly told that he felt in no very pleasant mood. (Happily a worthier and more philosophical system is proving to men that schools can be better govern'd than by lashes and tears and sighs. We are waxing toward that consummation when one of the old-fashion'd school-masters, with his cowhide, his heavy birch-rod, and his many ingenious methods of child-torture, will be gazed upon as a scorn'd memento of an ignorant, cruel, and exploded doctrine. May propitious gales speed that day!)